One pound of inference, no more, no less. No humbug, no cant, but only inference. This task done, and he would go free.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Markets Cater to All Demands, However Stupid

One of the great things about markets is when they expose the dumb and contradictory things that people believe.

When it comes to relieving pain, people have a view that essentially any change in temperature is helpful. Reducing the temperature helps - add ice! No wait, heat helps too - take off the ice and add a heat pack!

People are deeply attached to both ice and heat as methods of pain relief - it's as if the worst possible temperature is room temperature, and anything other than that is an improvement.

Now, of course, as anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics will tell you, something cannot be both cold and hot. This isn't even the zeroth law of thermodynamics - it's like the -1th law of thermodynamics - the same point in space can't have two different temperatures. They didn't bother to write this down, as it can be approximated by the phrase 'Duh!'.

But the heart wants what the heart wants. Enter markets, which step in to cater to people's ridiculous simultaneous demands for both heat and cold as methods of pain relief.

Because I object to actually giving money to companies attempting to flagrantly lie to me, I haven't actually invested in one to find out if it makes the area cold, hot, or neither (because as we've already established, it's clearly not making it both). But I imagine it probably just makes it tingly, which is sort of like being cold, right?

NO! NO IT'S NOT!

I can just see the idiots at the pharmacy thinking 'Gee, I was going to buy both a heat pack and an ice pack, but now I can just buy a single pack of 'Icy hot' and combine them into one!'.

LORD KELVIN IS SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE WHEN YOU FALL FOR THIS MORONIC MARKETING!!!